Student Loans: A Financial Crisis | Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas | HBO

Student loan debt is being called an impending financial crisis In the next five years,nearly 40 percent of the people who entered college in 2003 are expected to default on their student loans

Even people who don't default are still fucked when you figure that according to one study, it takes people on average 20 years to pay off their student loan debt Which means I should be done by now But someone I know bought a sailboat, when someone didn't know how to sail, and then someone crashed it almost immediately I'm talking about me I'm

Just for comparison, the GDP of Canada is also 14 trillion dollars Maybe we could pay off our collective student loan debt by giving Canada to all the colleges Just call it even Attention American universities and American University, Manitoba now belongs to you

-(WIND WHISTLING) -WYATT CENAC: What makes student loans even more of a burden is that people aren't landing the high-paying jobs they thought a college degree would get them Forty-two percent of recent college graduates are underemployed,so they end up doing jobs like driving Uber, serving coffee, just to make ends meet At this point, only about a third of the bartenders at your favorite bar are working there till their band takes off The rest are just geology majors with broken dreams, and even more broken geos I guess that's why they insist on being called mixologists

Sounds scientific to their families And while those bartend– mixologists are drowning in student loan debt, many went to college for the promise of a better future when they graduated, but those colleges don't always seem to invest that money wisely when it comes to those futures Instead of spending money to repair a crumbling library, Louisiana State University spent millions of dollars on a lazy river for the REC Center All that seems to be doing is sending a bunch of college grads out into the world with pruny butts And if there's one thing my econ professor always said, it's no one hires a pruny butt

-(DING) -WYATT: They just don't Maybe we put too much emphasis on college as the only way to succeed What about vocational schools? And you might be saying, "Ah, who wants to be a carpenter or welder?" Have you ever been on Etsy? That thing is filled with the shops of NYU alums who decided to trade in their English degrees to make reclaimed wood baby rattles And they're easy to spot They're usually selling what is probably a seven-dollar cherry wood rattle for 50 dollars

Typically, when people hear the term "vocational school," they tend to think, "Oh, no What'd you do to get kicked out of high school?" But in states like Colorado, Texas, Virginia, vocational school graduates actually make more in their first year out of school than graduates with a bachelor's degree They're getting a two-year head start on making money in fields that have expanded to keep upwith the current job market While a college graduate reads her thesis on the Oedipal implications of Biggie's first album to cry herself to sleep at night (WOMAN CRYING) I'm only talking about any of this because as things like automation begin to eliminate job sectors, in the next few years, there are gonna be a lot of opportunities for people with the types of specialized skills that come from vocational schools

Or from six-years' experience running an Etsy shop But a good shop Look, I know it kinda feels like I'm doing an infomercial for vocational schools in exchange for them paying off my student loan debt -Did it work? -(BUZZER) You know what? Fuck vocational schools! How about clown colleges? Seriously You clowns wanna help me pay off this debt? Come on Look, I'll clean your big, stinky shoes Please help me! Help me, clowns!